Laughter and Knowledge in Contemporary Poetry

Twenty-first-century poets use humor to examine and convey different kinds of knowledge—cultural, scientific, and emotional. Laughter in the work of poets like Raymond McDaniel, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, Albert Goldbarth, Kim Rosenfield, Jamaal May, Patricia Lockwood, and Lucille Clifton prompts us to examine competing epistemologies. These poets examine how we exchange the material of laughter, and expose the ways that affective responses can determine what we think we know. They show how laughter can re-shape our sense of canons and render unfamiliar material accessible, expanding our literary knowledge and the sympathetic capacities that knowledge carries with it. They demonstrate how laughter breaks down categories like “science” and “literature,” expanding the kinds of knowledge that we value as “fact.” At the same time, they warn that laughter’s power to heal trauma or mediate other minds is limited, and that we should not trust humorous insights too far.

Ungdomens poetiska form

The Poetic Form of Youth: The Rebellious Power of Language and Desire in the Anthologies Kärlek och uppror and Berör och förstör Siv Widerberg and Anna Artén’s poetry anthology Kärlek och uppror: 210 dikter för unga människor (Love and Rebellion: 210 Poems for Young People, 1989) is something of a classic when it comes to Swedish contemporary poetry explicitly addressing young readers. Thirty years after its publication another poetry anthology, Berör och förstör: Dikter för unga (Affect and Destroy: Poems for Youth, 2019), edited by Athena Farrokhzad and Kristofer Folkhammar, was published. Both books tap into a long tradition of lyrical anthologies. Neither of the anthologies contain poetry written primarily for young readers. On the contrary, the anthologies include poems from the Swedish lyrical canon. Although the two anthologies share a similar structure and joint themes such as youth, love, poetry, and rebellion, they are significantly different in regard to poetic form and the conceptualizations of youth. The main theoretical perspective in this study is that the form of the anthologized poems can be understood as ideological expressions of an interplay between the genre's tradition and its specific aesthetic context. By historizing the genre and comparing the different paratexts of the anthologies, the article shows that adult conceptions of youth hides behind the editorial choices. In a quest to (re)create new writing subjects, through the rebellious powers of poetic language and love, the symbolic form of youth poetry both challenges and negates adult notions of youth in the two anthologies.

The open subject and translations from nature: Answers to the Anthropocene in contemporary poetry (Gennadij Ajgi, Les Murray, Christian Lehnert)

With the help of the concepts ‘aura’ and ‘autopoiesis’, the relationship between poetry and natural phenomena can be defined as a ‘translation from nature’. Gennadij Ajgi translates his auratic manner of perceiving into poetry. For him, the poem becomes an epistemic medium transcending the sensory perception of nature for a hidden, spiritual level. Les Murray, conversely, demonstrates an autopoietic understanding of nature: The poet himself becomes the medium of the living being. Christian Lehnert takes up impulses from both orientations. He combines the opposing concepts so that they correspond to the hierarchical levels of his religious and metaphysical vision of the world. The three authors all aim to alter the attitude of humans towards nature through their ‘translation from nature into poetry’ so that humankind will open itself towards nature and raise it from an object which can be instrumentalised to an autonomous subject on equal footing with humanity itself.

Psycholinguistic Mechanisms of Understanding Contemporary Poetry by Future Philologists

The purpose of the article is to conduct the empirical study of understanding contemporary poetry by future philologists, which helps us to distinguish psycholinguistic mechanisms of such understanding. The methods of the research. The research was carried out using a sample method (using a questionnaire developed by us (Mykhalchuk, Ivashkevych & Nabochuk, 2020). This questionnaire we use to assess the psychological specifics of understanding of contemporary poetry by future philologists. In order to establish the peculiarities of the content of the associative series of the word “poetry”, we organized an associative experiment. Also we used the method of annotated reading (Illyashenko, 1980). The application of this technique involved solving the following tasks: (1) to develop the criteria to understand poetry for students; (2) to determine the levels of understanding of future philologists of poetic texts. The results of the research. We single out some special psycholinguistic mechanisms of understanding of poetic texts by students-philologists, such as: (1). The mechanism of actualization of “emotions of form”. (2). The mechanism of harmonization of meaning. (3). The mechanism of amplification of poetry. (4). The mechanism of acquiring aesthetic experience. We proved, that the subject of understanding is an active communicative person with multifaceted personal qualities. The subjective component of understanding is specified in two main groups of factors: (1) the factor of the activity of the understanding the subject, generalized in target conditions of understanding; (2) the factor of individual-personal conditionality of understanding: the assessment by the subject of understanding of his/her own moral, volitional, emotional-communicative qualities, personal aggression, a tendency to reflection, etc. Conclusions. The success of improving readers’ perception and understanding of the poetry depends on the activation of the latter. Readers focus more on direct intentions than on their own feelings and ideas about poetry, although the latter determines their different perceptions. The development of the perception and understanding of the poetic form of the reader is due to the realization of the increasing complex of emotional connections of the semantic elements of the text, and emotionality is one of the main criteria for assessing poetry.

Equivocologias leminskianas / Leminski’s equivocologies

Resumo: O artigo pretende investigar possíveis implicações entre a poética de Leminski com suas nuvens de equívocos, ecos contranarcísicos – e suas inquietações sobre o meio- ambiente, tal como se explicitam em alguns textos desde os anos 1970. A interpretação de certos poemas leminskianos exporia que tais implicações não se reduzem à eventual tematização de elementos da natureza, às vezes sublimados de modo parnasiano chic ou haicai-orientalizante. Muito pelo contrário, elas latejariam na relação que o poeta estabelece entre seus gestos (no movimento), os atritos de (dois ou mais) códigos e as vontades e ritmos da matéria. Com isso, a poesia de Leminski nos ajudaria a refinar um pensamento sobre os elos entre poesia e ecologia, linguagem e mundo, construída em diálogo com reflexões sobre esse dilema feitas por Michel Deguy (2007; 2009; 2012) e por Deborah Danowski e Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2014).Palavras-chave: Paulo Leminski; poesia e ecologia; poesia brasileira; poesia contemporânea.Abstract: The article aims to investigate possible implications between Leminski’s poetics with its clouds of equivocities, counter-narcissistic echoes – and his concerns about the environment, as explained in some texts since the 1970s. The interpretation of some of Leminski’s poems would expose that such implications are not limited to the possible thematization of nature’s elements, sometimes sublimated in a Parnassian chic or haiku- orientalizing way. On the contrary, they would pulsate in the relationship that the poet establishes between his gestures (in the movement), the friction between (two or more) codes and the wills and rhythms of the matter. Thus, Leminski’s poetry would help us to refine a thought about the links between poetry and ecology, language and the world, built in dialogue with reflections on this dilemma made by Michel Deguy (2007; 2009; 2012) and by Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2014).Keywords: Paulo Leminski; Brazilian poetry; contemporary poetry.

Literary Reception of War in the Contemporary Georgian Women’s Poetry

War has been reflected in national cultures and literature of every country, as it is related to sharp and turbulent emotions. The fear of death, tension, heroic pathos and suffering, following every war, gives it esthetic value and certain romantic touch too. Georgian-Ossetian conflict, war in Abkhazia, civil war and Georgian-Russian war have clearly been reflected in the literature created at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries, both in prose and poetry. In the presented report I will discuss Georgian women’s poetry, in which war is a literary reception and poems are the space for the reflection of emotions caused by war. In 2020, were published 2 volumes of the Almanac – Without Limits – which include texts by Georgian woman poets and writers, dedicated to war. Accordingly, the main literary material when preparing the report was the first, poetry volume of the aforementioned Almanac. The thesis does not consider discussion of war reception in general, in contemporary poetry, but only in the works by contemporary woman poets. There are radically different opinions on whether or not anthologies must differ according to gender and that art and its creator – artist – do not have an art-gender. It is true that art is universal and stands above any ethnic, race, religious, gender or age affiliations; however, we cannot ignore the fact that all these criteria are revealed themselves in literary works. Therefore, women’s poetry is specific and woman is always seen in its invisible nuances. In view of the research, it appeared to be very interesting and essential, how the war topic has been accepted and processed by contemporary women’s poetry. Contexts of Russian occupation, Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian ethnic conflicts, civil wars, formed as the new, post-soviet stereotypes, have clearly been reflected in Georgian women’s poetry; while postmodernism has appeared to be the favorable space for ignoring the Soviet clichés.

poesie italiane di questi anni (2005-2020)

The article proposes to make an assessment of recurring features of Italian contemporary poetry during the first twenty years of the 21st century. Five tendencies are here analysed: 1) the representation of subjectivities different from that of the authorial self; 2) deflation and expansion of the poetic self; 3) short poem; 4) installation poetry; 5) poetry in prose. Among these tendencies the first three will be more thoroughly investigated. L'articolo si propone di fare un bilancio delle caratteristiche ricorrenti nella poesia contemporanea italiana dei primi vent’anni del ventunesimo secolo. Vengono considerate cinque tendenze: 1) rappresentazione di soggettività distinte da quella dell'io autoriale; 2) deflazione o espansione dell'io poetico; 3) poemetto; 4) poesia installativa; 5) poesia in prosa. Fra queste, nell'articolo vengono approfondite in particolare le prime tre tendenze.

Poetry after 1989 and Its Contexts in Polish Language Education

The article focuses on the position of contemporary poetry in Polish language teaching at secondary schools. It highlights cultural contexts in lyric poetry created after 1989 from the standpoint of integrational education, by reviewing Polish language textbooks, and taking into account new tendencies in Polish poetry. The noticeable change in the poetic language is discussed in selected examples along with the filiations, and disputes with tradition, as well as problems of aesthetics. It was emphasised that contexts of literature play an important role in interpretation of poems by Marcin Świetlicki, Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, Tomasz Różycki and others.

poesie più recenti di Milo De Angelis

The article compares the poetic trends which emerged during the 1970s, and still present in the field of contemporary poetry, with the latest poems written by the Milanese author, Milo De Angelis. By underlining the problem of the crisis of the subject, the article also considers how this phenomenon may affect the vision of the poetic chronotope. Distancing itself from the dominant approach found in contemporary poetry, De Angelis' latest collection, Linea intera, linea spezzata (2021), aims instead to recover the status of the subject and the autonomy of the lyrical encounter through a particular form of memory. L’articolo confronta le tendenze evidenziatesi durante gli anni Settanta, e fin ora presenti nel campo della poesia contemporanea, con le ultime poesie dell’autore milanese Milo De Angelis. Rilevando il problema della crisi del soggetto, viene mostrato inoltre come tale fenomeno può incidere sulla visione del cronotopo poetico. Lontana dall’impostazione dominante, l’ultima raccolta di De Angelis, Linea intera, linea spezzata (2021), attraversando una particolare forma di memoria, si volge invece a recuperare lo statuto dell’io, nonché l’autonomia dell’incontro lirico.